Some of the participants at the ICO Topical Meeting 2004 held in Chiba, Japan, July 2004

In the past, ICO Meetings were held in Japan every 10 years (1964, 1974, 1984, 1994) and hence the OSJ with the ICO Territorial Committee of Japan was successfully approved by the ICO bureau to take the ICO meeting opportunity in 2004. Especially, ICO'04 was co-located with InterOpto'04 whose number of participants was about 12 thousands and the biggest optics & photonics industrial annual exposition in Japan organized by OITDA (Optoelectronic Industry and Technology Development Association). Obviously, the interaction between scientific and industrial activities stimulates the technical progress and our aim was to promote this great advantage. ICO'04 was joined with ODF'04 and ICOSN'04 which are well known international technical meetings initiated by the OSJ. It was then, the 5th ICO meeting in every 10 years since 1964 in Japan. The program consists of three main body sessions as ODF (Optics photonics Design & Fabrication), ICOSN (Optical Sensing & Nanotechnology) and Biomedical Optics with Quantum electronics & lasers which followed three plenary talks in the opening session.

The meeting has been quite successful involving 510 participants, including 92 from oversea, 28 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kyrgyz, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, Taipei China, Turkey, United Kingdom and USA. A total of 3 plenary talks delivered by E. Wolf, T. Yanagida and J. Wyant, 62 invited papers, 72 oral papers 172 poster papers and 7 post deadline papers even under the world wide hard economical situation. These facts confirm again that the international collaboration and competition makes progress also in this scientific and technological field and thanks to all of the participants, cooperating organizations and members of the executive committee who have lead this meeting in success.

Progress in the field of optics and photonics is dynamic, especially for the application to the information and communication technologies and recently new topics on the nano and bio-technologies are growing rapidly. ICO'04 provided an international excellent forum to lead the front edge by exchanging ideas and achievements through original paper presentations and discussions of optics-photonics related scientific and industrial topics in the fields of design, simulation, fabrication and testing and components such as Information optics, Fiber communications, Bio-photonics, Storage, Measurement, Camera, Microscopy, Lithography, Printings, 3-D displays and others.

At the occasion of this ICO Topical meeting an informal Bureau meeting took place as well on July 13, 2004, with participation of the ICO Bureau members attending the conference and the representatives of the local organizers and OSJ. As a resume of the discussed subjects, Ichirou Yamaguchi explained briefly the members and the activities of ICO. Then, he reported recent changes in publishing system of ICO Newsletter, ICO/ICTP Award 2004, and ICTP Winter College. Next, forthcoming events of ICO in 2004 and 2005 were presented. Some discussions arisen regarding the celebration of the forthcoming topical meetings to be held in 2006 and in 2007, respectively. There are currently various Territorial Committees studying proposals for defining topics and locations. In particular, for the 2006 the announcement should be issued by the end of this year. Other subjects of discussion related with the current activities of ICO Committees in particular about the role of ICO committee on standards. Some of the participants from industry pointed out difficulties in finding its connection with academic activities. The motivation of ICO for supporting optics and photonics in developing countries received understanding and approval. After, the present status and future plans of EOS were described, it was discussed how to promote closer collaboration between Asian countries through meetings and exchange of scientists and students.

A more detailed report will be published in the forthcoming Green Book "Toward ICO-20" (June, 2005).

ICO GALILEO GALILEI AWARD 2004 SHARED BY MILIVOJ BELIC AND CAESAR SALOMA: An insight on leadership on optics activities in a global community.

The Galileo Galilei medal of ICO is awarded every year to scientists authoring outstanding contributions to the field of optics that have been achieved under comparatively unfavourable circumstances. For the year 2004 the award has been accorded to Milivoj Belic and to Caesar Saloma. Milivoj R. Belic was born 1951 in the former Yugoslavia. In 1975 he left for USA, to pursue graduate studies at the City College of New York. He obtained PhD degree in 1980, under Joel Gersten and Melvin Lax. In 1981 he returned to Yugoslavia, to accept a junior position at the Institute of Physics, Belgrade. He remained with the Institute ever since.

Prof. Milivoj Belic

The research interests of Prof. Belic centered on optics from the beginning, more particular on nonlinear optics and nonlinear dynamics of optical systems. His work in nonlinear optics was concerned with the wave mixing, optical computing, and spatial solitons.

In nonlinear dynamics, it involved the development of optical instabilities and chaos, trans-verse pattern formation, and the dynamics of defects. In other areas, such as the condensed matter physics, he was working on photorefractive materials and defects. In computational physics, over a span of three decades, he was instrumental in developing ever more sophisticated numerical algorithms for the treatment of systems of PDE in space and time. While his activities in Yugoslavia were accomplished under very limited resources at hand, he succeeded in obtaining exact analytical solutions to various two-wave and four-wave mixing arrangements in photorefractive media. In the nineties, when his interest shifted to phase conjugate oscillators, he formulated working conditions for these devices and applied them to optical computing. In the past few years he introduced and demonstrated, with the help of experimental colleagues, the existence of counter-propagating two-dimensional vector solitons and bidirectional waveguides in SBN crystals. Currently he is concerned with the dynamics of counter-propagating solitons and self-trapped beams in saturable non-local media. His most important contribution is the establishment and maintenance of strong research group in Belgrade, working under adverse conditions, yet producing outstanding research results. The initial years of political unrest were followed by the economic breakdown and hyper-inflation, sanctions, deteriorating conditions to the times of no electricity, heating or gas, to food shortages, and falling bombs. It was difficult to do physics when the order of the day was physical survival. Yet, over the years, he produced a steady stream of high-quality papers published in the leading physics journals. Milivoj Belic is currently a visiting professor at the Texas A&M University at Qatar, in Doha.

Prof. Ceasar A. Saloma

Caesar Saloma is a professor of physics at the National Institute of Physics of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. Between 1987 and 1989, he was in the Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University to perform his PhD dissertation research under the super-vision of Shigeo Minami and Satoshi Kawata. His work dealt with temporal coherence control of semiconductor lasers as light sources in optical microscopy. In 1989, he returned to the University of Philippines as an assistant professor and started a research group in optical microscopy and signal processing. In 1994, Professor Saloma spent a year at the Osaka National Research Institute on a postdoctoral fellowship from the Science and Technology Authority of Japan where he worked on the use of optical feedback detection in optical microscopy. In 1996, he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Osaka University and worked with Hisato Kondoh on the use of the laser fluorescence confocal microscopy in imaging optically-thick biological samples. Caesar Saloma has investigated as well on the efficiency of laser confocal microscopy and multi-photon excitation microscopy for imaging applications in highly-scattering media. He collaborated with Satoshi Kawata in studying the potential use of two-photon fluorescence microscopy for observing biological samples in turbid media. Caesar Saloma and his team are using a home-built hydrogen Raman shifter as a light source for two-color (two-photon) fluorescence excitation and two-color generation of optical beam induced current in semiconductor devices. Together with engineers from Intel Technology Philippines, he is also developing new ways of detecting defects in backside integrated circuits. His team is also collaborating with marine biologists in the Philippines for classifying coral reefs and sea grasses by remote sensing. To date, Caesar Saloma has successfully trained ten PhD students at the University of the Philippines. In 2000 he became Director of the National Institute of Physics and is currently serving his second term until 2006. He has been working on new ways to improve the quality and efficiency of its graduate school programs. His efforts are based on the recognition that young talented Filipinos migrate to developed countries due to the lack of viable graduate schools in the Philippines where there are less than a hundred PhD degree holders in physics. Caesar Saloma served as president of the Physical Society of the Philippines from 1997 to 2000. He is currently a council member of the Association of Asia-Pacific Physical Societies. He is also an associate member of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics and a member of the OSA.

The call for the ICO Galileo Galilei Award 2005 is still open (deadline April 15, 2005). The colleagues interested in presenting nominations or obtaining information can visit the ICO Awards Page

The International Workshop on Optoinformatics was held in Saint Petersburg, at the State University for Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics.

Some of the participants of Internacional Workshop on Optoinformatics, held on Saint Petersburg, Russia, in October 2004, after poster session

The Second Edition of this series of workshops was organized inside the III International Conference on "Basic Problems of Optics", a major meeting taking place every two years, under the initiative of the above mentioned university, the Vavilov State Optical Institute, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Saint Petersburg State University, the section "Optics", House of Scientists of the Russian Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg, the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute and the Saint Petersburg Committee of Science and Higher Education. The International Workshop on Optoinformatics, with lemma: "Optics meets Оптика", was receiving a total of 38 communications, with 2 invited conferences, 24 oral presentations and 12 posters including a five minutes oral presentation of the poster contents. These works were signed by a total of 113 authors from various geographical regions and countries: Armenia, Austria, France, India, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, P.R. China, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and USA. Subjects covered a broad area inside the applications of optics to informatics, quantum information processing, optoelectronics devices for signal treatment and optical communications, chaos and encryption, processing of visual information and complex biological systems, optical coherence tomography, non-linear information processing and laser beam characterization. Because of the current difficulties that are facing many scientific groups for having facilities in mobility, the number of attendees was not as high as expected and desired. Nevertheless, an active and fruitful atmosphere for discussions and exchanging of information was created and appreciate by the organizers and participants. There was a main agreement among all the attendees that this series of workshops is of interest and have to be continued inside the main focus on optics and informatics. The Chancellor of the State University for Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics, Prof. I. Vasilèv, provided all the necessary support and facilities for ensuring the success of the event.

At the occasions of this workshops, the ICO Secretary, M.L. Calvo, was also visiting the Optics Section of the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow and received the information on the current activities of the Russian Territorial Committee, presided by Eugene Zolotov, and visiting the various laboratories dedicated to optical information processing and micro-optics, with excellent recent scientific achievements.

ICO is endorsing and supporting these activities and it is having the concern for providing in a future the necessary background for enhancing their impact. The proceedings of the workshop have been edited by the Saint Petersburg state university, in English, as well as those from the III International Conference "Basic Problems of Optics" (in Russian). Some exemplars are still available as per request to: alexandervpavlov@mail.ru

Obituary: In Memoriam of Aurelio Oliva Viera

The past January 3, 2005, and unexpectedly, Aurelio Oliva Viera died in La Havana City, Cuba, due to an acute severe respiratory problem.

Aurelio Oliva (Yeyo, to his friends) was a physicist, who was having a great dedication for years, putting time, efforts and intelligence to the activities of optics in Cuba. Aurelio was graduated from La Havana University in 1972. Later, he received a MSc. in the speciality of optics and lasers from Havana Polytechnic Institute José. A. Echeverria (ISPJAE). Since 1975 he visited Russia, in a program of scientific collaboration and training at the Ioffe Institute in Saint Petersburg. At the laboratory of holography and optolectronics, he worked with S.B. Gurievich and later also with Yuri Denysiuk and he specialized in holography and holographic interferometry.

Back to La Havana he was doing applied research at Cuban Centers dedicated to design and implementation of instrumentation for industrial and biomedical applications, such as ININTEF (Instituto de Investigaciones Técnicas Fundamentales, Institute for Research in Fundamental Techniques) and CEDEIC (Centro para el Desarrollo de Instrumentación Científica, Center for the Development of Scientific Instrumentation). As an example of his contributions, he participated as responsible in the team for the design of medical instrumentation for laser therapy, having later a commercial projection not only in Cuba but also in some European and Latin American countries. To this regard, he collaborated for many years with the Cuban Ministry of Public Health to standardize the use of laser equipment for medical applications. Aurelio was one of the pioneer's physicists in Cuba that early in 1993 contacted ICO representatives to form the Cuban Territorial Committee of which he was President up to 2001. He was very active as well in the organization of activities at the Cuban Physical Society, of which he became President of the optics and spectroscopy section, and at the Cuban Academy of Science, collaborating also with ICO in the Traveling Lecturer Program, and in enhancing the presence of optics in the Caribbean area by organizing many professional events. The last years he was participating in a mixed company for the installation of solar energy panels in Cuban rural areas. Aurelio Oliva was not only a talented person with a very enjoyable personality but he was also very generous and always ready to work with the aim to provide his forces and knowledge for the development and achievements of a more equalized society. The physics in Cuba, and specially the optics community, has suffered a great lost. We will solely miss him.